Top 10 Cyber Threats To Look Out for in 2025

Cybercrime is no longer a distant threat—it’s a global crisis accelerating at an alarming rate. By 2025, the cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $10.5 trillion annually, effectively making it the world’s third-largest economy if measured by GDP. This is a sharp jump from $9.22 trillion in 2024, signaling how quickly these digital threats are intensifying.

The U.S. stands at the forefront of this digital battleground, with projected losses climbing past $452 billion in 2024. Looking further ahead, global damages are expected to surge to $15.63 trillion by 2029—raising urgent questions about how prepared organizations really are.

Even current numbers paint a troubling picture. In 2023, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported cybercrime losses of $12.5 billion. But this figure only reflects cases officially reported, meaning the real impact is likely far greater.

Delving deeper into the IC3 data reveals the evolving nature of these threats. Investment fraud alone accounted for 37% of total reported losses, while business email compromise (BEC) caused nearly $3 billion in damage. Other major attack types included tech support impersonation ($925 million), personal data breaches ($744 million), and romance scams ($653 million).

The Statista chart based on FBI data shows that Investment fraud represents 37% of all reported financial losses (Source)

What’s driving this surge? The rapid adoption of technologies like AI, IoT, 5G, and cloud computing has dramatically widened the attack surface. Cybercriminals are no longer limited by scale or skill—tools like AI-powered malware, ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), and targeted phishing campaigns make it easier than ever to launch sophisticated attacks.

This shift means cyberattacks aren’t just a concern for large enterprises anymore. Small businesses, government agencies, and even individuals are squarely in the crosshairs. And as threats grow in complexity, so too must our defense strategies.

This article takes a closer look at the ten biggest cyber threats to watch in 2025—unpacking how they operate, the damage they can inflict, and what steps organizations must take to stay protected.

Top 10 Cyber Threats in 2025

1. AI-Driven Malware & Deepfake Attacks

AI-generated malware adapts in real-time, bypassing detection by traditional security tools. These threats can autonomously mutate, making them difficult to identify and mitigate.

Deepfake attacks, also known as AI-generated identity fraud, are being used to impersonate executives and manipulate financial transactions. These highly sophisticated fakes leverage synthetic media deepfakes to deceive employees and financial institutions.

According to the CNN report, in 2024, a finance worker in Hong Kong was defrauded of $25 million after participating in a video conference where deepfake technology was used to impersonate the company’s CFO and other staff members. This scam highlights the increasing sophistication of deepfake technology and its potential for financial fraud.

Gartner predicts that 30% of enterprises will find identity verification unreliable by 2026 due to AI deepfakes, which can bypass current biometric authentication systems.

To combat this, CISOs should prioritize vendors offering advanced tools capable of detecting injection attacks and inspecting synthetic media—key steps in reducing the risk of deepfake-driven fraud. Using an AI detector can also help flag machine-generated content that may be part of a broader social engineering or phishing campaign.

Meanwhile, ransomware groups are leveraging AI and automation to enhance their extortion tactics, while also deploying highly adaptable, AI-generated malware to increase the effectiveness of their attacks.

2. Ransomware Evolution: Triple Extortion & RaaS

Ransomware groups have evolved their tactics by combining encryption, data theft, and threats to leak stolen information. Triple extortion tactics now include contacting customers or stakeholders to apply additional pressure on victims.

In May 2021, the Colonial Pipeline attack halted 45% of the East Coast’s fuel supply. The attack involved a nearly $5 million ransom paid to the DarkSide ransomware group, impacting fuel prices and prompting states of emergency. DarkSide affiliates received $74.7 million of the total $90 million in ransoms paid by 47 victim companies.

The average ransom demanded by DarkSide was $1.9 million, highlighting the large profits that encourage these cybercriminal actions.

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack case study highlighted how ransomware can disrupt national infrastructure, resulting in millions spent on ransom payments.

On May 12, 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack began, exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It spread rapidly through networks, infecting over 200,000 computers in 150 countries within three days.

The global financial losses from this cybercrime were estimated to be $4 billion, with the UK’s National Health Service alone incurring a $100 million loss. The attack was stopped by a security researcher who activated a “kill switch” by registering a specific domain. The primary solution was to patch the vulnerability or disable SMB.

To combat these advanced threats, organizations must adopt a zero-trust security model, enforce strict access controls, and regularly train employees on cybersecurity best practices. Maintaining secure offline backups and deploying real-time threat detection systems can further strengthen defenses.

A Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), where no user or device is trusted by default, significantly reduces potential entry points for ransomware and limits lateral movement within the network.

3. Advanced Supply Chain Attacks

Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in third-party vendors to infiltrate multiple organizations at once. By targeting software supply chains, attackers distribute malware through trusted providers—making detection and mitigation significantly harder.

In 2020, the SolarWinds supply chain attack compromised approximately 18,000 organizations by injecting malicious code into the company’s Orion software updates. This supply chain breach affected multiple U.S. federal agencies and private sector companies, leading to significant financial and reputational damage.

SolarWinds later reported $40 million in losses within the first nine months of 2021, with an additional $20 million annually spent on ongoing security enhancements—highlighting the long-term impact of such breaches.

Best Practices for Third-Party Security Risk Management

• Enforce strict vendor security policies: Mandate regular security audits and compliance requirements for all third-party providers.
• Conduct frequent security assessments: Continuously evaluate external systems for vulnerabilities.
• Use real-time monitoring tools: Detect unauthorized access, suspicious activity, or compromised integrations.
• Restrict third-party access: Apply least privilege access policies to limit exposure from external connections.

4. IoT and 5G Exploits

According to Statista, the global IoT device count is projected to double from 15.9 billion in 2023 to 32.1 billion by 2030, with China leading with approximately 8 billion consumer devices in 2033.

The consumer market accounts for roughly 60% of all IoT devices, a share expected to remain consistent over the next decade. However, resource limitations on these devices create significant security and privacy vulnerabilities, including hard-coded credentials and a lack of configuration options.

How Do Cybercriminals Exploit IoT Security?

• Weak authentication: Many IoT devices lack strong passwords, making them easy to hack.
• Unpatched vulnerabilities: Attackers exploit outdated firmware and software flaws.
• Botnet attacks: Hackers take control of IoT devices to launch large-scale DDoS attacks.
• Data exposure risks: Misconfigured IoT systems can leak personal or business data.

In October 2016, the Mirai botnet launched a massive DDoS attack against Dyn, a major DNS provider, using a network of compromised IoT devices. This attack caused widespread internet outages, disrupting access to major platforms like Twitter, Spotify, and PayPal. The disruption led approximately 8% of Dyn’s customer base (over 14,000 domains) to switch providers.

Mirai controlled about 600,000 connected devices using 62 default usernames and passwords. This shows how vulnerable poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be. The attack reached a peak of 623 Gbps, severely disrupting Dyn’s services and affecting users in Europe and North America.In January 2025, a new Mirai variant, Aquabotv3, exploited a vulnerability in Mitel phones and was advertised as DDoS-as-a-Service.

As per Cloudflare’s report, on October 29, a 5.6 Tbps UDP DDoS attack from a Mirai-variant botnet targeted a Cloudflare Magic Transit ISP client in Eastern Asia. The 80-second attack involved over 13,000 IoT devices but was autonomously mitigated by Cloudflare’s defense systems.

Mirai attacks accounted for 6% of all network layer DDoS attacks — a 131% increase in QoQ. In 2024 Q4, a Mirai-variant botnet was responsible for the biggest DDoS attack on record.

The Mirai Botnet attack showed how unprotected IoT devices can be used to disrupt services around the world.

How to Secure IoT Devices Against Cyber Threats

• Implement network segmentation: Separate IoT devices from critical systems.
• Regularly update firmware: Patch vulnerabilities to prevent exploits.
• Use AI-driven anomaly detection: Detect unusual activity in real-time.
• Enforce strong authentication: Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for device access.

As IoT vulnerabilities continue to rise, another critical area of concern is cloud security, where misconfigured APIs and storage buckets expose vast amounts of sensitive data.

5. Cloud Security Risks & API Vulnerabilities

Cloud misconfigurations, exposed API endpoints, and weak access controls are among the leading causes of data breaches. Misconfigured cloud environments can lead to unauthorized access, data leaks, and compliance violations.

In March 2019, Capital One experienced a data breach compromising the personal information of over 106 million individuals in the U.S. and Canada. The breach was attributed to a misconfigured web application firewall, which allowed unauthorized access to sensitive data, including names, addresses, credit scores, and Social Security numbers.

The incident was discovered when an ethical security researcher reported the vulnerability. Paige A. Thompson, a former employee of Amazon Web Services, was arrested in connection with the breach. As a result, Capital One experienced significant financial and reputational damage, which led to increased scrutiny from federal regulators.

The reports from the FBI, CloudSploit, and Mr. Brian Krebs provided insight into the steps taken during the cyberattack, as shown in the figure above.

1) Anonymized Access: The attacker used the TOR Network and IPredator VPN to hide their IP address. This helped them conceal the source of their malicious activities.

2) SSRF Exploit: A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability was exploited, allowing the attacker to execute commands remotely and gain access to a private server.

3) WAF Misconfiguration: A misconfigured Web Application Firewall (WAF) enabled the attacker to relay commands to AWS’s metadata service (http://169.254.169.254), which stores temporary credentials.

4) Credential Theft: Combining the SSRF and WAF flaws, the attacker retrieved AccessKeyId and SecretAccessKey credentials via the URL http://169.254.169.254/iam/security-credentials, linked to a partially redacted role (“*****-WAF-Role”).

5) AWS S3 Enumeration: Using the stolen credentials, the attacker executed the “ls” command to list all AWS S3 buckets in Capital One’s account ($ aws s3 ls), revealing over 700 buckets.

6) Data Exfiltration: Finally, the attacker ran the AWS “sync” command ($ aws s3 sync s3://bucketone) to copy approximately 30 GB of credit application data from Capital One’s S3 buckets to their local system. 

How Can Organizations Prevent API Security Breaches?

• Enforce strict API security policies: Limit API access and apply rate limiting.
• Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Restrict API access based on user roles.
• Use automated security auditing: Continuously monitor APIs for vulnerabilities.
• Enable strong authentication: Require OAuth 2.0 or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

6. Insider Threats and Credential Theft

Not all cyber threats originate from outside the organization. Insider threats—whether caused by negligence or malicious intent—pose serious risks to data security. Employees with access to critical systems may unintentionally expose sensitive information or deliberately engage in intellectual property theft, sabotage, or corporate espionage.

In March 2021, Russian national Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to attempting to extort Tesla by offering an employee $1 million to install malware on the company’s network. The plot aimed to extract company data for ransom but was foiled when the employee reported the approach, leading to Kriuchkov’s arrest.

In March 2022, SafetyDetectives discovered an unprotected AWS S3 bucket belonging to Pegasus Airlines, exposing around 23 million files (6.5 TB) containing flight data, crew PII, navigation materials, and software source code.

The risk of a data breach arose from employee negligence when a system administrator improperly configured the cloud environment, leaving sensitive data unprotected by a password. Although no actual data breach occurred, this incident violated Turkish LPPD laws, which could result in potential fines of up to $183,000.

Strategies to Mitigate Insider Threats

To mitigate insider threats, organizations must implement a multi-faceted approach that includes:

• User Behavior Analytics (UBA): Leverage UBA to identify unusual patterns in employee behavior that could suggest malicious intent.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools: Use Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools to stop unauthorized individuals from accessing, transferring, or stealing sensitive data.
• Strict access controls: Enforce strict access controls to limit employee access to only the data necessary for their job function.
• Privileged access monitoring: Monitor users with elevated access rights to track and review their activities.
• Employee risk profiling: Use employee risk profiles to identify individuals who are more likely to pose insider threats.

By combining these strategies, organizations can proactively detect and prevent insider threats, minimizing the risk of financial and reputational damage.

7. Cryptographic Weaknesses and Post-Quantum Threats

Advances in quantum computing pose a risk to traditional encryption methods. Cybercriminals could use quantum computing to break RSA encryption, revealing sensitive government and financial data.

A recent claim by Chinese researchers indicates that they have broken the encryption of RSA-2048 using a quantum computer. As reported by Tom’s Hardware, this announcement has sparked significant debate within the cybersecurity community.

This breakthrough raises concerns about weaknesses in traditional encryption methods. However, experts are unsure about whether the results are valid and can be reproduced.

In 2015, NIST began standardizing quantum-resistant algorithms to counter emerging quantum threats, shortlisting 15 from 82 global submissions. Draft standards were released in 2023, and in August 2024, NIST finalized the first three post-quantum encryption standards, as reported by NIST, to replace vulnerable methods like RSA and ECC.

How Businesses Can Prepare for the Post-Quantum Era

• Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC): Adopt encryption protocols resilient against quantum attacks.
• Implement Hybrid Cryptographic Models: Combine traditional encryption with quantum-safe algorithms to ensure layered protection.

Assess Current Cryptographic Assets: Identify and prioritize systems that rely on vulnerable encryption methods.

8. Monolithic Vulnerabilities in Critical Infrastructure

Critical infrastructure—such as power grids, healthcare systems, and financial networks—often relies on monolithic systems with single points of failure, making them high-value targets for cybercriminals. When a widely used component is compromised, the impact can cascade across sectors.

The Log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228), also known as Log4Shell, was discovered in December 2021 and posed a critical security risk affecting millions of servers worldwide. Within the first 72 hours of its disclosure, over 800,000 attack attempts were recorded worldwide.

This flaw allowed attackers to execute remote code by exploiting the popular Apache Log4j logging library, leading to potential data breaches, system takeovers, and financial losses across various industries. Security researchers at Alibaba Cloud found a vulnerability and shared the information publicly, leading to global security alerts.

According to Palo Alto Networks, there were approximately 125 million intrusion attempts related to Log4Shell between December 10, 2021, and February 2, 2022, illustrating how a single vulnerability can become a global cybersecurity crisis.

Organizations must focus on checking for vulnerabilities in real-time, create strong policies for Software Bills of Materials (SBOM), and maintain strict network monitoring to avoid significant disruptions.

9. Phishing & Social Engineering 2.0

AI-driven phishing emails and deepfake-based scams are becoming more convincing and difficult to detect. According to the FBI Internet Crime Report, Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams have led to $50 billion in global losses.

BEC scams manipulate business email accounts—often impersonating executives, vendors, or legal advisors—to deceive employees into transferring funds or sensitive data. These attacks are typically fueled by social engineering tactics and leave minimal technical footprints, making them difficult to trace..

Common types of BEC scams include:

• CEO Fraud, where attackers pose as company executives.
• Invoice manipulation involves fake or altered invoices.
• Account Compromise, where attackers gain access to an employee’s email account

Real-World Examples of BEC Attacks:

• Evaldas Rimasauskas (Lithuania) scammed Google and Facebook out of $100 million by impersonating an Asian manufacturer. He created a fake company in Latvia, sending fraudulent contracts and invoices to divert payments to his accounts.
• In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks lost $46.7 million when scammers posed as company executives and initiated unauthorized international wire transfers.
• In 2016, an Austrian aerospace manufacturer lost around €50 million ($54 million) after an employee responded to a fake email that appeared to be from the CEO.
• In 2019, Toyota Boshoku Corporation was defrauded of 4 billion yen ($37 million) through a deceptive payment request.
• A U.S. agricultural firm lost $17.2 million in 2015 after an executive was tricked by emails spoofing the CEO and legal advisor.

How to Defend Against BEC and Phishing 2.0?

• AI-Driven Email Security: Use AL-ML powered email security solutions to detect behavioral anomalies and suspicious email patterns.
• Zero Trust Identity Verification: Always verify identities—especially for financial transactions, using secure, independent channels.
• Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR): Detect and contain threats at the device level before they spread with a managed EDR solution.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Prevent unauthorized access, especially for financial systems and email accounts.
• DMARC, DKIM, and SPF: Enforce advanced email authentication protocols to stop spoofed messages.
• Employee Training: Regularly educate staff to recognize phishing, CEO impersonation, and social engineering tricks.

Incident Response Plan: Implement a proactive protocol to report, contain, and recover from phishing incidents.

10. Smart Buildings and OT Security Threats

Attacks on operational technology (OT) are becoming more frequent and have evolved from causing immediate disruptions, like shutting down a plant, to threatening safety with potential physical harm. Recent incidents, including the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, highlight the need to separate IT and OT networks.

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting smart building components like HVAC controls, access systems, and manufacturing equipment, exploiting the growing digitization and connectivity of these environments.

According to Gartner, security incidents in Operational Technology (OT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS) are primarily driven by three motives: causing physical harm, commercial disruption by reducing output, and damaging reputation by undermining trust in manufacturers.

Notable OT Cyberattacks:

• Colonial Pipeline (2021): Though known as a ransomware case, it emphasized the critical need to separate IT and OT environments to prevent operational disruption.
• Oldsmar, Florida Water Treatment Plant (Feb 2021): An attacker used TeamViewer to remotely access the system and dangerously increased sodium hydroxide levels from 100 ppm to 11,100 ppm. Weak passwords, outdated systems, and the lack of a firewall contributed to this vulnerability.
• Israeli Water Facility (2020): State-sponsored attackers, allegedly from Iran, took control of a remotely accessible engineering workstation, demonstrating how remote access can be exploited to manipulate physical processes.

Maroochy Water Services, Australia (2000): A disgruntled ex-employee used stolen radio equipment to command sewage systems, causing a month-long raw sewage spill, significant environmental damage, and public health risks.

Key Recommendations for OT Cybersecurity:

• IT-OT Segmentation: Isolate operational networks from IT environments to prevent lateral movement.
• Continuous Monitoring: Deploy real-time monitoring for anomalies across both OT and IT systems.
• Implement OPSEC Programs: As recommended by CISA, integrate security into every phase of the operations lifecycle—risk assessments, asset inventory, incident response, and policy enforcement.
• Cultural & Technical Controls: Apply separation of duties, enforce user accountability, and conduct regular security awareness training to strengthen your human firewall.
• Robust Compliance Frameworks: Align with industry standards and government regulations to ensure legal and operational resilience.

A 2023 survey revealed that the vulnerability of operational technology (OT) networks to cyberattacks is leading to greater involvement of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) in OT cybersecurity decisions. 95 % of respondents confirmed this trend, up from 88% in 2022.

Conclusion

As we navigate 2025, cyber threats are evolving at an unprecedented pace. From AI-driven attacks and advanced ransomware to supply chain and API vulnerabilities, organizations face a rapidly expanding attack surface fueled by IoT, cloud adoption, and critical infrastructure digitization.

To stay ahead, businesses must adopt a Zero Trust architecture, leverage AI-powered defenses, and engage in real-time threat intelligence sharing. Enhancing insider threat detection, securing APIs, and transitioning to post-quantum encryption are equally vital to reducing emerging risks.

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